I cooked a couple of good dinners this weekend. Saturday’s dinner was good, but not everything I did worked out well – I’d made a crockpot roast chicken with vegetables, and while the chicken was really nice, I’d used the vegetables to keep the chicken off the bottom of the crockpot (instead of balls of crumpled aluminum foil), and the vegetables ended up cooked in the juices, and I prefer the taste and texture of roasted vegetables.

The other thing that didn’t work out well was the gravy – I’d rubbed the chicken with a mix that included paprika and cayenne pepper, and the gravy was spicy, which was not what I was expecting.

Overall, though, the meal was quite good.

It was totally outdone by tonight’s dinner, though. I had a roughly six-pound pork shoulder roast, which I slow-roasted after applying Long’s Peak Pork Chop Spice, crushed garlic, and olive oil.

As an accompaniment, I made a sweet potato, goat cheese, and pine nut strudel using a recipe from this book. (Click picture for a larger view.)

Marion was very impressed by dinner. The meat was falling-apart-tender, and the strudel was incredible. That’s another recipe that goes on the “keeper” list. We’re looking forward to tomorrow night’s leftovers.

The Martin Guitar Company is celebrating a couple of milestones, and has produced commemorative guitars to note them. First, it is the 50th anniversary of the D-35 model, and they’re producing a limited run (100 total guitars) of a Brazilian 50th Anniversary Edition. Each one costs about $7000.

Both of them are out of my range – I’d have trouble saving my pennies to get the D-35, and the D-100 is worth more than half of what my house is worth. I won’t even say, “If you’d like to buy me one of them …” because they’d be wasted on me – I’m not really a guitar guy. However, if you wanted to get me something from this page …

I have two “go-to” breakfasts I make for myself. One of them is oatmeal, which I like to dress up with raisins or currants and a bit of brown sugar. I also like to add about a teaspoon each of ground flaxseed, chia seed, and hemp seed. I use a coffee grinder to grind the seeds, but their oil content causes them to form a packed mass that is hard to get out of the grinder.

However, if you put a teaspoon of uncooked oatmeal into the grinder with the seeds, it absorbs enough of the oil to keep the result “loose.” Getting the ground seeds out of the grinder is quite easy and cleanup becomes very simple.

Most years, usually in December, we visit Marion’s relatives, also spending a few days in New York City. The trip was enjoyable, and we had a good time. Then again, we normally do. We didn’t see a Broadway or off-Broadway show this trip, but we had enough other activities to keep us occupied, including a birthday party for a 95-year-old and seeing the pterosaur special exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.

We had a number of very nice meals during the trip. The previously-mentioned birthday party was one of them, but we also had a good meal at a Cuban restaurant in Manhattan, as well as several nice meals with Marion’s relatives. One special treat for me was having a glass of 30-year-old Macallan Scotch. Very nice, and it totally outclassed the bottle of 15-year-old Glenlivet that I gave Stuart.

The trip back wasn’t a good part of the trip, though. Because of heavy weather, our flight was routed through Canadian airspace. I don’t know how much time that added to the flight, although we were scheduled for a flight time of just over 4 hours. According to the Travel Math website, the average flight time from NYC to Denver is 3 hours and 45 minutes. The corresponding time in the other direction is 3 hours and 15 minutes.

In any case, even though we had some bothersome turbulence during both takeoff and landing, we actually made better time than scheduled, and landed five minutes early, at 7:37pm. Then we spent just over half an hour waiting for the gate to become available. Our luggage finally showed up on the carousel at 9pm, and the time to get to our of-airport parking, clean the snow off the car, and drive home meant that I didn’t get into my house until 10:21pm. Bleah.